The Twin Paths to Socialism: ‘Equity’ and ‘Climate Change’ Alarmism By Edward Ring
https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/15/the-twin-paths-to-socialism-equity-and-climate-change-alarmism/
America’s socialists, backed by corporations that profit from central planning and mandated markets, claim racism and fossil fuel are existential threats. They’re not
Supporters of President Trump’s bid for reelection accurately depicted his agenda as one of America’s last chances to stop—or at least slow down—the nation’s drift toward socialism. Joe Biden’s candidacy has been depicted as the attempt by globalist corporations to reassert their control over American politics, wherein they will impose socialist redistribution schemes that devastate the middle- and working classes, making them dependent on government and rendering their citizenship irrelevant. This, too, is mostly accurate, although slowly-boil-the-frog protocols shall be followed to obscure the transition.
When roughly half the electorate recently chose Biden to be the next U.S. president, however, they weren’t consciously endorsing corporate socialism. Biden voters, to the extent they believe in socialism, haven’t yet figured out that the socialist movement in the United States is largely controlled by corporations. What they believe, thanks to relentless propaganda and censorship of dissenting viewpoints, is that President Trump is a racist and a “denier” of climate change. As such, President Trump is perceived as a menace, an object of hatred and fear, and anyone would be a better choice for president.
President Trump is not a racist, and he cares about the environment as much as any reasonable person ought to, but these two issues are much bigger than Trump. The issues of racial equity and environmental protection are marketed as the existential challenges of our time. In response to these challenges, we are told the only effective answer is socialism, whether in the form of the Green New Deal, deference to international organizations and treaties, or submission to critical racial theory retraining.
To fight socialism, you can’t just convince people that it is an inherently flawed system. You have to destroy these two premises; that America is a racist nation, and that climate change poses an imminent threat to the survival of humanity. If you don’t, people will take their chances with socialism because they will see it as the only option.
Guaranteeing Equal Outcomes No Matter What
Anti-racism leads inevitably to socialism as soon as you move from offering equal opportunity to mandating equal outcomes. Despite pervasive propaganda to the contrary, equal opportunity has been institutionalized in America for several decades. But despite this fact, there remain significant disparities in aggregate group achievement by race. Conscientious liberal anti-racists look at these disparities and conclude they are the consequence of America’s historical legacy of racism that up until recently denied nonwhites access to jobs and housing and education. They add to that a belief that “unconscious racial bias” and ongoing “systemic racism” further hinders black achievement, and explains the underachievement by Hispanics.
The problem with demanding racial “equity” to counter alleged ongoing racism is simple: What if the explanation for the underachievement of certain groups has little or nothing to do with racism? And what if, no matter what is done to counter alleged racism, significant gaps in group achievement persist? In that case, the only way to achieve equity, if that happens, is through socialist redistribution of wealth.
The good news, or what ought to be good news, is that America is not a racist nation. America is the least racist nation on earth. Many of the people spreading the racist narrative know this, but they are socialists (or corporate socialists) and they understand that complete racial equity can only be achieved via socialism. The end is socialism, and the means is convincing Americans they are racists and must atone. But it is a lie, for many reasons.
One of the most obvious repudiations of the racist narrative is the achievements of Asians, who outperform whites in almost every category of group achievement including educational attainment, household income, and net worth. And Asians are not the only ethnic group that outperforms whites. Indians and Nigerians also outperform whites. American Jews, who are white but who nonetheless endured past discrimination, also outperform other whites. Why is this?
Here is where a critical choice faces Americans. Do they listen to the divisive nonsense coming from politicians like Kamala Harris, and—at hideous cost—embrace socialist redistribution to level the achievements of every identifiable group in America? Or do they openly defy those who purport to speak for disadvantaged communities, and challenge them to identify and fix those cultural differences that might also explain their academic and economic underachievement?
Here also is where well-established facts contradict the narrative of racism as the cause of group underachievement. In particular, a high correlation exists between children raised in two-parent households and success later in life. Asians top the list, with 82 percent of households with children having both parents present. Whites are in second place at 73 percent. But only 33 percent of black households with children have both parents present. The only external force, ironically, that might induce a married couple to divorce, would be if doing so led to enhanced welfare benefits. Racism, overt or unconscious, historical or present-day, has nothing to do with members of the black community keeping their marriages intact.
Where there are broken homes, there is academic underachievement, there is juvenile delinquency, there are higher unemployment and lower income-earning potential, there are higher rates of arrests, convictions, and incarceration. It all starts at home.
But socialists don’t believe in traditional families. And they don’t believe in meritocracy, instead stigmatizing it as a “code word” for racism. But it isn’t racism that is responsible for Asians having the highest SAT scores in America, or blacks having the lowest. More than anything else, the reason is that Asians have the highest rate of intact families, and blacks have the lowest. SAT scores, currently under withering assault by socialists and possibly headed for oblivion, are one of the most reliable predictors of success in college and lifetime earnings.
These inconvenient truths elude the race-baiting socialists, but they don’t elude black conservatives who actually care about their communities. From elder statesmen like the venerable Thomas Sowell and the aptly named Larry Elder, to young and passionate patriots like Candace Owens, Kash Lee Kelly, and Malcolm Flex, there are black leaders and influencers who reject socialism and champion the rights and potential of individuals.
If you work hard and with integrity, you can make it in America. There is no such thing as utopia. We do the best we can. That is the healthy way to look at this nation, and it is the healthy way to look at life. If you want your community to log higher aggregate achievements, stay married, and encourage others to do so, as well. While you’re at it, stand up to the teachers’ union monopoly and implement education vouchers and universal school choice.
Saving the Planet by Any Means Necessary
If anti-racist socialism will determine whom we can hire, promote, fire, patronize, live with, study with, work for and associate with, all done in a manner designed to take from the overachievers and give to the underachievers, saving the planet will determine where you live, what you eat, what you wear, what you drive (if anything), and where you travel; it will micromanage every detail of your life on earth.
As part of the mandate to reduce the human “carbon footprint” to preindustrial levels within a few decades, the climate alarmists and their corporate backers are prepared to destroy the fossil fuel industry and invest in solar, wind, and battery technologies that will become obsolete right about the time they’re finally deployed at any significant scale. And how feasible is it for human civilization to run on “renewable” energy?
The following pie chart, below, relying on data from the BP Statistical Review of Global Energy, shows the percentage that renewables contribute to global energy usage. At 5.5 percent, this includes everything, wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and biofuel. Imagine this replacing everything else, bearing in mind that the climate alarmists, inexplicably, do not accept nuclear or hydroelectric as viable energy sources to expand.
To further put the potential of renewables into perspective, consider the next chart, below, which reflects the socialist dream of redistributing energy consumption equally among nations. Note the area of this pie chart; nearly twice that of the previous one. This graphically represents how much more energy would be required if every person on earth, per capita, consumed energy at half the rate of current per capita use in North America; that’s the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
This illustrates a stark reality: If everyone on earth used half as much energy as North Americans use today, global energy production would have to double. Accomplishing that is impossible without fossil fuels.
Fossil fuel isn’t the only culprit, of course. Anything that results in increased greenhouse gas requires monitoring and regulation, from bovine flatulence to the size of the windows permitted in your home. Suburban “sprawl,” which is the only way to maintain an affordable equilibrium in housing, must be stopped because it leads to more “vehicle miles traveled.” Lawns, gardens, and long showers cannot be tolerated, because the collection, storage, distribution, and treatment of water requires energy, and energy must be rationed in order to minimize use of fossil fuel.
The level of micromanagement headed our way if the climate alarmist lobby isn’t stopped is simply unbelievable, but these people are dead serious. “Smart growth” policies will pack people into increasingly dense urban areas, as rural areas are systematically depopulated. “Smart homes” will monitor and manage everything the inhabitants do, controlling and correcting their use of water and energy. To please gullible libertarian enablers, instead of explicitly rationing resource consumption, acceptable thresholds will be set, with punitive pricing tiers designed to “incentivize” people to restrict their behavior. Want to have a lawn? Better be a billionaire.
There’s so much wrong with these policies it’s difficult to know where to begin. Telling people they’re bigots if their skin is white, and victims if it is not, and training them all to believe this, is not a recipe for social cohesion. It’s a recipe for resentment and hatred. Moving beyond this divisive rhetoric to actually confiscating wealth and income and limiting opportunities to people if their skin is white, and transferring them to people whose skin is not white, will destroy the character of a population by telling them their work and their abilities are secondary to the color of their skin.
Similarly, putting a stop to fossil fuel development at precisely the moment when the entire global population is finally moving beyond poverty is not a recipe for peace and prosperity. It’s a recipe for misery, rebellion, and war.
Attempting to carpet the world with wind turbines and solar farms, backed up by millions of tons of batteries, when abundant natural gas and clean coal would deliver reliable energy at a fraction of the price, is epic folly. In a wealthy nation like America, it will cause economic stagnation. In emerging economies around the world, to impose such destructive policies would be a form of neo-imperialism that only a delusional climate fanatic could fail to recognize.
There is an easier choice. It is the choice that President Trump offered, and its rejection by the elites is more a statement of their avarice than an indictment of his vision. That vision, and the policies on offer pursuant to that vision, are much bigger than President Trump.
Americans must reject the bigotry of reverse racism and without reservations they must insist on a colorblind meritocracy. Similarly, Americans must embrace the concept of resource abundance, supporting projects and policies that develop all forms of cost-effective conventional energy while at the same time encouraging innovations that will lead to leapfrog technologies that render today’s renewables obsolete.
The drawbacks of socialism should be obvious, and increasingly, voters are realizing this fact of history. To counter this dawning enlightenment, America’s socialists, backed by corporations that profit from central planning and mandated markets, have come up with the demons of racism and climate change. To stop socialism, Americans must stand up to the alarmists that claim bigotry and fossil fuel are existential threats. They’re not.
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